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Living With Music: A Playlist by Clyde Edgerton

By Dwight Garner August 13, 2008 11:07 amAugust 13, 2008 11:07 am

Clyde Edgerton (Kristina Edgerton)

Clyde Edgerton’s new novel is “The Bible Salesman.”

Clyde Edgerton’s August 2008 Playlist:

The first few songs on my list of favorites have a distinct connection to four beats in one measure of music. Think about marching feet hitting the pavement to “The Stars and Stripes Forever:” one two three four, one two three four, with the emphasis on each beat. Now think of the rhythm pattern that is a basic element of a good bit of blues and R&B music: one two three four. The emphasis on two and four makes you want to push your shoulder or head toward some unseen wall on the one, then back, another push on the three, then back, sort of like Ray Charles’s head and shoulder movements at the piano. Of thousands of good examples of this simple syncopation — this emphasis on two and four — I pick:

1) Send Me To the Electric Chair, the Bessie Smith standard sung here by David Bromberg (on “Wanted Dead or Alive”). The song starts in a kind of one two three four mode and then exactly at the one minute mark we get a suspenseful pause, and then it starts swinging — horns and drums emphasizing that two and four. From a country-blues-bluegrass-jazz, fiddling, guitar playing, band leading godfather of Americana.

Another song with a pleasing two-four swing as well as an almost hypnotic groove is:

2) I Need Your Loving, by Don Gardner & De Dee Ford (from “Goldisc Records from the Vault Vol. 2″). The powerful, gospel-like, one-chord groove is established just after the inspired opening yell of “Whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa, whoa, whoa.” The groove holds until the apparent (and very conclusive) ending to the song at one minute and 45 seconds. And then — hold on — comes once of the most satisfying surprises in any song I’ve ever heard.

It’s tempting to conclude that any song emphasizing not the two and four but rather the one and three will be square, unmoving. Well, give a listen to one of the most, if not the most, inspiring banjo duets ever recorded:

3) Soldiers Joy, played by John McEuen and Earl Scruggs on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” album. We find on this standard fiddle tune a melding of both frailing and three-finger picking banjo styles — nothing else, no other instruments — and what is established is a groove that splinters the center in spite of the stressed one and three beats, not the swinging two and four. This is one of the songs I’d like played at my memorial service. In fact, this whole list ought to work.

4) You Can Leave Your Hat On (from “Sail Away”), Randy Newman. This song is a reason to live. Another hypnotizing groove that gives way to suspenseful “stops.” And on this track: a fourth beat only stress — as well as stress on the very next half beat — adds a new dimension to our examination of rhythm. Play this song while you’re with the one you love.

5) I Don’t Mind (from “Live at the Apollo”), James Brown. From one of the best albums ever. (Just after the famous spoken intro on that album listen to the brief music interlude — listen to the snare drum speaking on not two and four, but on two and a half and four. It feels like the drummer is magically both above and with the music simultaneously.) “I Don’t Mind” is special because it shows off James Brown’s “low” voice and also because of the short syncopated riffs with silent spaces, and also because of the uncanny speed with which the back up singers sing the words “I don’t mind.” Idonmy. I imagine their rehearsals of that phrase, and it must have been, at least some of the time, crack-up funny. And for a mind-boggling 30 second mix of Stravinsky and James Brown listen from 15:39 to 16:08 during the Michael Tilson Thomas interview with James Brown on American Public Media.

6) Rolling In My Sweet Baby’s Arms, Leon Russell on his authentic country album “Hank’s Wilson’s Back!” A traditional bluegrass song that starts out with, of all things, electric guitar, piano, steel guitar and drums. But halfway through — suddenly — the electricity, the steel, piano and drums drop out and we uncover pure bluegrass (unless you consider dobro unpure) — with the tempo upped. The first half of the song represents the sanctity of old, not new, country music and the second half delivers straight bluegrass. A happy mix on one track. And there are slap-happy bass bits at the very beginning and very end of this song.

7) The Lonesome River (from “Clinch Mountain Country,” Ralph Stanley and Friends). Stop the happy. Bob Dylan’s first 20 or 30 sung words — tone, timbre, presence — define “lonesome” and this is the one song — well, another song — on my list that you must hear. After singing the verse, Dylan harmonizes with Ralph Stanley on the chorus. Stanley’s high tenor is one of the few voices that will be allowed in the Main Time Capsule meant to outlast the earth.

8) Blue Car, by Greg Brown (from “Just One More, a Music Tribute to Larry Brown”). The voice. That’s the main thing: the voice. In this song Greg Brown sounds like a character from Larry Brown’s fiction, a character I don’t think I’d want to because of what all the vocal tone says the character has experienced — drop dead sadness and loss and hurt. Yet, in that same voice, there’s a strength in the voice that comes from pain.

9) I Think It’s Going To Work Out Fine (from “Bop Till You Drop”). This is Ry Cooder’s instrumental version of the Ike and Tina Turner song. At 47 seconds comes a sound that epitomizes what can be said with an electric slide guitar and demonstrates Cooder’s mastery of his instrument, the loose precision of his technique. This song will take you back to any place you’ve ever been that you now wish you could revisit.

10) Are You Tired of Me My Darling (from “Meeting In The Air: Songs of the Carter Family”). From one of the purest voices in folk music, that of Mike Craver, comes the question we tend not to ask. On an album that celebrates songs from the royal family of folk music.

11) Given Me The Roses While I Live, from the same album just above, sung by the classic high tenor voice of Jim Watson. And listen to Mother Maybell Carter’s trademarked guitar picking style from Jim’s right thumb. “Give me the roses while I live, trying to cheer me on. Useless are flowers that you give after the soul is gone.”

The displaced emphasis on beats two and four is not a particularly good representation of “syncopation.” The term refers to rhythmic gestures that fall entirely off strong pulses, and is not simply a modification of the normative hierarchy of pulses (presumably, the preceding “marching” example, though this example has its problems as well).

Matt, I believe the 2 and 4 vs syncopation can be summed up when Dizzy Gillespie played with Machito and he asked “Where’s the beat?” 4/4 time meets African rhythms. I know it’s more complex, but you can feel it in a 2-3 clave or a 3-2 clave.